Last week, the New York Times Motherlode blog cross-posted a piece by Femamom‘s Haley Krischer about a thorny situation at her son’s school. When seven-year-old Jake referred to his sister—his mother’s child by his stepfather–as his “sister”, the school nurse corrects him, telling him that the child he’s always known as his sister is, in fact, his “half-sister.” His mother is not pleased.

I explained [to the nurse] that each family handles the term “half” differently, depending on how the kids are raised. “In our family, the term ‘half’ delegitimizes the relationship, and in a deeper sense, it makes the sibling relationship sound less authentic,” I said. Half, by definition, implies lesser than. And just as an adopted child wouldn’t be introduced as “my adopted sister,” a half-sibling wouldn’t be introduced as “my half-sister.”

Many commenters took Krischer to task for being “too sensitive” and “blowing it out of proportion.” Some of them said that they had half-siblings and never had a problem with that terminology—a classic case of “it’s not a problem for me, so it shouldn’t be a problem for you.” Others with half-siblings agreed that “half” was undesirable, especially when the parents have deliberately chosen—as Krischner and her husband have—to create a family that doesn’t discriminate between whose children are whose.

To me, the bigger issue here is that the nurse felt the need to correct Jake at all. It didn’t seem to occur to her that a seven year old child is plenty aware of what his family situation is, and calling his sister “sister” is what his family does. The nurse has no right to treat it as an error, or tell him to use a term connoting less intimacy rather than more.

This whole discussion is particularly relevant to my own life. I have three younger brothers who are my father’s children by his second wife. We were not raised in the same household, but I have never referred to them as my “half-brothers” nor, to my knowledge, have they referred to me as their ‘half-sister.” I also have a stepsister who is no genetic relationship to me at all. I call her my “sister” because we were raised together from the time I was seven years old, and her father—who I call “Dad”, by the way—raised me as lovingly and actively as if I were his own child.

But because the two-biological-parent nuclear family is still seen as the norm—even though the data show conclusively that it is not—people act confused or disbelieving if they realize that my brothers and sister are not the children of both my biological parents. Or that the man I call “Dad” is not my biological father (in a further confusing twist, my stepfather and I look much more alike physically than my biological father and I do.) Let me tell you, when I explain these things to certain people, minds are blown.*

Like Krischer’s son, I was frequently corrected: “Oh, those aren’t your brothers, they’re your half-brothers.” Or “He’s just your stepdad.” Which always struck me as extremely rude and presumptuous. I am not stupid. I know the terms half- and step-. I choose not to use them. Why do people feel the need to question that choice or act as though I’m somehow a little dim and don’t understand my own family connections?

Another favorite was the patronizing or bemused “Wow, that must be confusing.” To which I always answered, “Maybe for you, but not for me.” I have always been perfectly clear on who my family is. If other people aren’t, that’s their problem. Why would it matter to anyone—except possibly a judge—whether my siblings or parents are tied to me by marriage, blood, or some combination of both? If I tell them someone’s my dad, or my brother, or my sister, that’s all they need to know.

What’s especially ridiculous here is the notion that this is all some brand new modern development that society’s still getting used to. The blended family is not a new thing. For most of human history, children frequently lost a parent, the surviving parent remarried and had more children with the new spouse, or brought their own children into the family.** The only thing that makes this a “new” phenomenon is that now both biological parents are still alive when half-siblings are born or step-siblings brought into the mix.

Families are as much a reflection of chosen bonding as they are of blood or marriage ties. What we call our family members is our choice. People who can’t respect those choices or feel the need to impose their own ideas about family onto other should shut the fuck up. The end.

*As children, my sister and I figured out pretty quickly that this was a frequent reaction, and used to fuck with people by telling them that we were sisters and then grinning smugly at their confusion.

**And if you read a lot of primary source documents from centuries past, such as wills or correspondence, you’ll find that people very rarely referred to their half-siblings, step-siblings or step-parents (or even in-laws) as anything other than “brother, sister, mother, father.” This may be because the nuclear family has always been the ideal, and people have sought to maintain that image, but I always theorized that because of the high rate of mortality and remarriage, people were more accepting of the need to blend families, and maybe more eager to heal their losses by immediately absorbing new members.

24 Responses to “Relative Terms”

I have to say that I was really surprised commenters called her sensitive, it’s incredibly offensive to correct someone for referring to their sister because basically she is his sister, there’s no half about it. Its like the constant desire newspapers had to refer to Nicole Kidman’s kids with Cruise as ‘adopted’ as though they were somehow lesser kids and this must be pointed out at all times.

Oh yeah also I had a good friend growing up who used to introduce his sister as ‘my sister twice over’ – his parents had divorced so had her and then his mum had married her dad and vice versa. That really used to blow people’s minds.

Yup, this. It’s amazing to me how many people “correct” me and say, “Oh, he’s your HALF-brother” when I explain that my youngest brother is not my mother’s biological son.

But, then, I also hate when people refer to my mother’s husband as my stepfather, since they got married when I was 28 and he is a complete and total bigot and asshole. (Why did she marry him? The jury, it is out.) I don’t like to have my relationship to him defined in terms that don’t include their marriage. Weird, I know.

I have a hyphenated last name, and the order goes [Father's Last Name]-[Mother's Last Name]. This is not the norm for the (also abnormal) hyphenated name in America; it’s usually the father’s name which goes last, to show… I don’t know, precedence or something. Anyway, I used to have to struggle with school officials about my name, including when I was seven and the admin on duty told me, “No, your name is [Mother's Last Name]-[Father's Last Name].”

The phrase, then, To me, the bigger issue here is that the nurse felt the need to correct Jake at all, really hit me. I think these are the moments when kids pick up the fact that in an unequal power relation, the superior person gets to make the call.

This reminds me of something that I went through as a child. I was raised by my mom and her partner and our family included her partners 3 kids from her marriage and my little sister and I who are the product of artificial insemination after they got together. When I was in elementary school the guidance counselor at one point asked me if my little sister was my “real” sister or not. I had no idea what he meant but when I told my mom she flipped out. Turns out that when he discovered I didn’t have a dad he wanted to know if the two of us had the same donor (we do but we look nothing alike). How it could possibly have been his business I have no idea; some people are just creepy.

On a side note the youngest of my older sisters and I went through a phase when I was a teenager of alternately referring to each other as half or step siblings (we look even less alike) but for years now we’ve just said sister.

Amen Becky. It’s none of the nurses business how Jake’s family define its members. My sister is my half-sister but I never really think of her that way since we were raised together. We share a mom, and she always refers to my sister’s siblings (through her dad) as half-sister and half-brother, which they are, but it irritates her because she doesn’t make that distinction with her and me.

Becky, I went through that too. I thought it was really cool to have an adoptive step-cousin. He was fine with that description, but bemused.

I’ve been corrected by my mother, who was offended when I called my birth-father’s new wife my stepmother. Even when I offered to call her my wicked stepmother. And I got a lot of people refusing to accept the “birth” part of birth-father, since “he’s your father”. Yes, he’s also abusive and a fraud. Should I fully qualify his place in my life, or do you want me to stop there? It still gripes me that people who should have known better refused to accept my descriptors.

The thing about kids getting overruled also bugs me, and once you start seeing it it happens all the time. I especially don’t like reluctant kids being forced into hugs or cuddles. I don’t care *why* someone feels it appropriate, it squicks me. You’re teaching the kid that their boundaries don’t matter.

I met my sister Elnora two years ago for the first time. In technicality, she is my half-sister, as she is my father’s daughter from a previous marriage. But I’ve never seen her that way and I’ve come to loathe that term.

Mostly because, due to my father and Elnora’s complicated relationship, he would often fling that term out as if to demean our relationship. “Because she’s my sister,” I would tell him, and he would say in a horrible, ugly tone, “HALF-sister.” It would infuriate and disgust me. So I have a natural distaste towards it. No one defines my relationships except me.

People are such pedantic asswipes about this because of Sperm Magic. Valuing DNA over lived relationships is a fundamental part of patriarchal thinking. Not a little bit of flag-planting going on with it.

@Lindsay: Very true. It’s usually considered rude to emphasize that a child is adopted rather than genetically related, although as Emilyanne points out, it definitely happens.

I have an adopted cousin, and certainly I have had people refer to her as my “adopted cousin” with the implication being that she’s not a full member of the family. I suspect it’s in large part because she’s of a different race than the rest of my family so the fact that she’s adopted is impossible to miss, and people are so fucking fixated on the supremacy of DNA relationships.

Even discounting the historical record, I really don’t get how people can refer to this as a new situation. Divorce has been widely legal and easy to get for more than one generation in this country. I’m 33 and in my affluent section of Indianapolis growing up, I’d put the divorce rate amongst the parents of my peers close to 50%. I know it wasn’t like that everywhere, but it’s been a long time since it was rare.

I was raised by parents who did not share my last name, and it boggles my mind that people still want to know if the schools will be confused because I don’t share my own children’s last name.

And moz, I also got flack for referring to my biological father as my “biodad.” People insisted that he was just my dad. And I insisted right back that my stepdad (who I called Don until the day he died) was my real dad. My biodad was someone I spent eight weeks with in the summer. My stepdad was someone who taught me how to ride a bike, ran interference with my occasionally overprotective mom, and helped with my homework. How can people not see the difference?

When, on my biodad’s side of the family, my only biologically related male cousin was born after 25 years and seven biologically related girls, my grandmother told me how relieved she was that we finally had a boy in the family. I said, in a tone that suggested she might be senile, “Grandma, we have Matt.” and she replied, “Oh I meant real grandsons.” Matt was adopted as an infant and he was 16 at the time. It was the first time I ever realized she thought it mattered.

I feel like this is an extension of policing people’s right to self-identify. Whether it’s telling a bisexual person that she’s really a lesbian or telling an eight-year-old that her Dad is really her stepdad, it’s a clear case of not respecting other people’s right to define themselves and their relationships.

I’d say it also comes back to binary thinking. Once people realise there are a host of ways to be and relationships to have, maybe they will finally stop pushing a ones-and-zeroes outlook.

Since we’ve had civil partnerships in the UK, which are marriages in everything but name, you get folk – from whom you don’t normally expect bigotry – insist that you can’t use the words “husband” and “wife” within or about these relationships (“You mean civil partner,” they say, as if legal terms are what counts in informal social situations).

We’ve always played around with this stuff. Historically, lots of husbands and wives weren’t legally married (it’s only a few hundred years since the institution was formalised). And quite apart from the sibling stuff, children always had uncles and aunties, sometimes grannies too, who weren’t blood (or were such complicated relations that it was too much of a mouthful).

Hey Becky – Thanks for writing this. So thoughtful and yikes, I cannot believe people actually corrected you. You’d have to restrain me. So many people contacted and approached me individually that I’ve decided to talk to the principal about changing the protocol when discussing families. We live in a very liberal east coast town where off the top of my head, 5 kids have mom/mom or dad/dad situations. How do teachers explain THAT? The answer is, they shouldn’t be. The explanations should come from the family themselves, as Skada mentioned above. Allow the kid to define how it looks and sounds.

Look, people are entitled to their opinion and when you put yourself out there, not everyone is going to agree. But the reality is, family structure has been changing for a long time and there just has to be an element of sensitivity when dealing with kids. Thanks for your support…

I’m with everyone who was struck by the nurse’s entitlement in correcting the child. I’ve always been struck by how adults often feel perfectly free to control/direct/correct speech or behavior in a child with whom they have no or very little relationship vs. how they would behave towards an adult. Would we ever think to correct an adult who spoke of their family members using relationship terms we might not think are 100% accurate? I don’t think so.

I still feel white-hot anger toward a neighborhood mother who, when I was five, chastised me for drinking juice out of a bottle because I was “too old.” Who the fuck was she to tell me off for something that had zero effect on her life or the life of her kids? I see this nurse’s behavior in the same light — it’s pointless control over a person who is in the vulnerable position. It’s an abuse of her authority as a school official.

People need to get over themselves and mind their own business! Even a small child gets their family and that’s all that matters, not the descriptions others give it. My family explanation has always been complicated. Parents divorced when I was 3, father left the state, so mom had help from all kinds of family and friends. I remember my grandfather taking me to kindergarten the first day and it caused drama. You’re not her father? Where’s he? Where’s her mother? Her best friend was my second mom, was part of every bit of my world, even to this day. I’m 41 and still have no issue saying she’s mom, too. Never was close to my father, I call him the Sperm Donor. His mother (my mom adored her ex-mother-in-law, kept close to her for my benefit as my father was out of the picture) had three husbands and seven kids. Two with the first, three with the second then she adopted two with the third. And a neighbor’s son lived with her because he was gay and his parents didn’t approve and were awful to him. To me, they all are my aunts and uncles, no half, step or adopted. I love them, don’t care where they came from. And to put the cherry on top, same grandma found out when her mom died that she wasn’t her mom, she was her aunt, therefore her brothers were her cousins. Nope, still were her brothers till she died. I realize my family tree is all over the place and the village raised me, but I was very loved- no one could ask for more. Never bothered me a bit that people didn’t understand and seemed horrified by the complexity. If anything, I’m sorry they weren’t as fortunate as me.

The nurse was so far out of line, I’ve been speechless since I read the piece.

I have much younger siblings and it never fails that when I refer to them as my brother and my sister, people pause and offer, “Oh, but your mother/father remarried, so they’re really half-siblings.” To which I reply, “Meh, they’re my siblings.”

People have such a need to organize things the way THEY want them organized: gender, race, religion, etc. I think it’s really mind-blowing for them that other people might defy *their* system of organization, and EXPECT to have their self-identification respected.

harpies, this is fantastic.. and great analysis.. I just wanted to share a little anecdote when I was little. As some harpies are aware, I come from a massive family*, that yes includes blending.

I remember when I was little it was my older brother who would pick me up from pre-school. One day the teacher asked why my brother was a lot older than me, and I said because he comes from my mum’s first marriage (which is true). The kindy teacher did a similar thing to the nurse, “oh, so he’s your half brother”. I remember looking at her oddly and saying, “no he’s my brother”.

And how I felt comfortable answering the teacher in that way, is the way my older brother would respond to people who would say similar things as well. I remember hearing my brother respond to “so she’s only your half sister”, with “no she’s actually my full sister, she’s my sister all of the time, not half of it”. And it stuck.

* It’s massively blended, with “full” and “half” blood siblings, and a whole bunch of technically step-siblings as well. However I didn’t grow up with them or know these step-siblings, so they are not really siblings per se, or constitue the orbit of what is defined as my family.

Not much to add to what has already been said, other than I’m really, really surprised to hear that you guys still use the term half-brother. I live in Scandinavia, and while I remember the term, I haven’t heard it used for 20+ years at least.

We have terms for “my fathers new partners child with someone else” etc., and those are in common use. But half-brother? No.